SECTION VI.
To continue further our refutation of the slander, appears to us useless. The facts speak for themselves. Without examining the details, it is evident that when one is willingly deceived in regard to the person, the family, and the civil status of Columbus, — when one has unappreciated his great soul, despised his genius, and calumniated the yearnings of his heart, — we are left nothing to presume from that his work has been judged by him with impartiality.
And, in truth, those who have written the life of Columbus, yielding to the magisterial influence of which we have spoken, have wandered away from, or been silent about important facts, when they have not distorted them to make them square with their preconceived opinions of historic expositions. After having denied the supernatural aids which were visibly manifested in the grand dramas of his career, they refuse attributing human genius to Columbus himself. Solely, in declaring him a stranger to the sciences and to mathematics, they accord him great sagacity of observation. From fear of painting him as a hero, they have travestied him as a common man, systematically despoiled him of everything that constitutes grandeur, and not only have they accused him of ignorance, of ingratitude, of bigotry, of presumption, of littleness, and of puerile vanity, but they have also wished to lessen the exterior acts of his life; diminish the obstacles, shorten the conflicts, and lessen the perils over which his inspirations knew how to triumph. They did not perceive that in looking at things through the spectacles of positivism, they fell into the mediocre, and consequently into the ridiculous and the impossible.
Could a man endowed solely with great tenacity and power of observation know how to do what Columbus has done? Does not the sole sublimity of his name speak of his heart? This renown of Columbus, the most immense,
